The sesquicentennial of the Gettysburg campaign has been under way for a while now with Civil War enthusiasts eagerly remembering the moments notable and not in the most celebrated campaign of the Civil War as they happened 150 years ago this month. Their commemoration is just about to culminate, of course, with the anniversary of the battle itself in the next three days, and no doubt carry on for weeks more as they remember its aftermath.

One of the things that makes the Gettysburg campaign memorable, besides leading to the biggest battle of the war, is that it was without a doubt the largest incursion of Confederate forces into a state that had been free soil before the Civil War. Specifically, of course, they invaded Pennsylvania, which was home to a small but noteworthy black population (nearly 57,000 in 1860). Southern Pennsylvania had long been an enticing destination for Eastern slaves seeking to escape bondage, as it was the first free state north of the Mason-Dixon Line. But with Maryland to its south and other slave states nearby slave catchers did not have far to come in search of fugitives. The state became such a magnet for “manstealers” that the legislature in 1826 passed a law trying to keep them out, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional in Prigg v. Pennsylvania in 1842, reversing the conviction of Edward Prigg, a professional slave catcher, for kidnapping, after he returned several fugitive slaves in Pennsylvania to their owners.

Indeed, one of the most infamous moments of violence resulting from the infamous Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 occurred in Christiana, in southern Pennsylvania, about eighty miles east of Gettysburg in Lancaster County. On September 11, 1851 (150 years to the day before 9/11–a curious if meaningless coincidence), a posse of six men led by Maryland slaveholder, Edward Gorsuch, descended on Christiana, having learned that several of his slaves were there. Gorsuch’s visit was entirely legal under federal law and he was accompanied by a deputy U.S. Marshal. An informant had told the party the slaves were hiding in the home of William Parker, a local laborer and himself a runaway slave. To make a long story short, Parker and the other fugitives were armed, shots were fired, and at the end of the encounter, Edward Gorsuch was dead and his son gravely wounded. Parker and Gorsuch’s slaves fled finding refuge in Canada and the case became yet another moment of sectional controversy in decade replete with then, contributing to the bitterness on both sides leading up to the Civil War.

It was this legacy, amplified by over two years of war, that helps explain the mood of Confederate troops as they crossed into Pennsylvania in June 1863. With federal armies having repeatedly crisscrossed Virginia and other southern states, and given refuge to thousands of slaves, rebel soldiers were in the mood for revenge. And one of the ways the Confederates got that vengeance was to carry off into slavery black Pennsylvanians unfortunate enough to fall into their hands.

While this phenomenon might just have occurred because of the initiative of countless individual rebel soldiers some scholars believe the seizure of African Americans in Pennsylvania in June 1863 was a result of policy emanating from the top of Lee’s army. As David G. Smith writes:

Smith sees the seizure of black Pennsylvanians as part of broader foraging activities of the rebels during their 1863 invasion, carrying off anything that might be potentially valuable to their army and the Confederacy more generally. But he also believes that blacks not only were seized as a military asset, but also in revenge for the depredations of federal forces south of the Potomac River. Smith writes:

While there is no doubt much truth to David G. Smith’s assessment, it does not capture the shock and outrage of white Pennsylvanians when they saw their black neighbors carried away by the rebels. James M. Paradis has collected a number of heart-rendering accounts of Confederates capturing and sending south African Americans, some of whom had been born free, into slavery. The following is taken from his book, African Americans and the Gettysburg Campaign (2013), pp. 31-33. Paradis writes:

If the Confederates took disproportionate numbers of women and children it was because most of the men had no doubt fled, along with anyone else capable of leaving. Women with small children would have had trouble fleeing the rebel advance, and so fell into Confederate hands.

It will never be certain how many black Pennsylvanians were carried away by the Confederates during the Gettysburg Campaign. The number is at least in the several hundreds. That more African Americans were not kidnapped by Lee’s Army is because those that could prudently fled before their arrival, following the precedent of slaves liberated by Union Army who retreated with it when the fortunes of war shifted to avoid re-enslavement. Fortunately, such moments of African Americans fleeing to remain free were rare during the Civil War, but they did happen, such as during the Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania in June 1863. It was a pity all black Pennsylvanians could not get away from invading rebels, but thankfully their period of bondage would be relatively short (if they lived) compared to the past generations that had been born, lived, and died as slaves.

Share this:

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Related

About Donald R. Shaffer

Donald R. Shaffer is the author of _After the Glory: The Struggles of Black Civil War Veterans_ (Kansas, 2004), which won the Peter Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship in 2005. More recently he published (with Elizabeth Regosin), _Voices of Emancipation: Understanding Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction through the U.S. Pension Bureau Files_ (2008). Dr. Shaffer teaches online exclusively (i.e., a virtual professor). He lives in Arizona and can be contacted at donald_shaffer@yahoo.com